Posts Tagged ‘Al Gore’

We still think of idealists as men in worn coats sleeping on cots in cold basements. Those sorts of men can still be found, but the basements are the old digs of an evicted Latino 7th Day Adventist Church with the paint scraped off to expose the fashionably bare brickwork and go for $2,500 a month on the wrong side of the Williamsburg Bridge strewn with cots from IKEA and kept cold as a statement about Global Warming. Their shivering denizens work profitably at an environmental non-profit as social media managers in the great national and international network of the Left.

Five years later they’re living in a posh bedroom community in Jersey as the heads of some shell organization aimed at young people that’s funded by mysterious family foundations and angling for a job in D.C. advising a Senator or a Cabinet member on the environment. If not they’ll have to settle for a gig at some Green consultancy telling old timey corporations on how they can get sustainable to win over the kids and score some sweet tax breaks.

If they’re truly lucky, the dedicated idealist may even earn a chance to ghostwrite Al Gore’s next book about the environment. At parties, they’ll take out a pristine copy of the New York Times bestseller, a status it achieved through the efforts of social media managers who coordinated mass buying efforts followed by mass returns for zero net profit but maximum status, whose cover features Gore gazing contemplatively at the Earth, and whisper to the person they’re trying to impress. “I wrote that.”

Idealism is a brand now, and few men have profited from it as thoroughly as Albert Arnold Gore Jr. Where former presidents Carter and Clinton dashed to different philanthropies around the world, Gore, true to his stodgy unimaginative image invested in one brand of idealism. Environmentalism. Carter could have his houses and Clinton could sit in luxurious hotel rooms in Haiti counting all that aid money, but Gore, like the intrepid tobacco farmer he was, bet everything on the whole planet.

In the 90s, environmentalism was just one of many stocks in the rainbow market of liberalism, alongside AIDS, racism, sexism and world hunger. A good MTV VJ could manage to incorporate all five into a hope for world peace, followed by a grunge band, a rap video and a series of seizures. And environmentalism was still limited to saving cute animals and being angry at oil companies for being all about the oil.

Al Gore’s environmentalism seemed as boring as everything else about him. It was fitting that a man with the bearing and personality of a tree would spend all his time yammering on about trees. But then a series of Mayan tablets predicting the destruction of the North Pole by 2007 or 2012 or 2092 came into the possession of a humble former Vice President and everything changed.

Racism was bad, but it wouldn’t kill everyone. Neither would AIDS. World Hunger was something for the Africans to worry about. But Global Warming brought back Armageddon in a big way. Like the Cold War, cold basements or bungee jumping, it reminded the numbed children of privilege that they could die at any moment. And it stroked their egos by telling them that, just like in all their favorite Saturday Morning Cartoons, only they could save the world.

Al Gore, like many a bearded prophet, had gone to his mansion in the wilderness of Belle Meade (median income $194,016) and returned with pie charts and cockamamie theories made up by other people that would make him extremely rich. Idealism was a brand, and unlike Clinton, Gore seemed sincere, if only because he came off as too unimaginative not to be.

With luxury goods, the brand is also the product, and environmentalism is the ultimate luxury good. Luxury products are at their most profitable when marketing intangibles. Flying over calf leather from Italy is expensive. Giving American leather a fancy name is cheap. Environmentalism is much the same. The real commodity being sold is particular a state of mind and membership in an exclusive club.

Capitalism made luxury hard work by making everything cheap. Suddenly it wasn’t enough to just lie in bed and order the butler to bring you exotic pomegranates from the Orient and champagne from the vineyards of France. Those things could be found in any supermarket courtesy of the jet plane. Status stopped being a lazy man or woman’s game and became a frenzied rat race. Fat was out and hyperactive workouts were in. Anyone could afford good art, so those with discerning taste chose bad art. Anyone could vacation abroad, so they bought old farm houses, restored them and painted bad art while trying to grow their own food.

Status itself became a sign of a lack of status. Anyone could buy a suit, so the occupations of the rich became those where you did not have to wear a suit, where you could become very wealthy while wearing jeans, a hoodie and sneakers. The grandsons and granddaughters of the nouveau riche relearned the old lessons of the upper crust that displays of wealth were vulgar and status lay in a self-conscious lack of it. When everyone has cars, you ride a bike. When everyone can afford steak, you buy a thimble cup of 200 dollar organic magic beans. When everyone wants things, you show how little you need things by convincing everyone to go Gandhi and give up things.

Environmentalism was the ur-brand of philanthropy. A philanthropy as big as the planet for a cause so generous that it was completely anti-materialistic. And like all luxury, it was also hugely and obscenely profitable.

While his rival was getting tangled in Iraq, Al Gore was becoming the Giorgio Armani of environmentalism. And environmentalism was much bigger than men’s coats or women’s shoes. It was a lifestyle, a cause and a movie deal. It was everything.

Causes are like copyrights. A company that believes in a cause, donates money from its profits to the cause. Sometimes that’s explicit, as with the Red label, mostly it happens behind the scenes. But the green label is everywhere, on the product and behind the scenes. It’s the lifestyle that says you like to buy things, but you also care about the planet. It says that you’re a modern sensitive person who loves the peasants of Guatemala and the ice of the South Pole. And just like buying a silver vest covered in diamonds, it says that you shouldn’t be allowed out of the house with money.

But environmentalism is bigger than all this. It’s not just green toilet paper and recycled rubber shoes, washing machines that don’t work and recycling carts with usage meters on them. It’s numbers. And the numbers are really big.

Money used to be gold, now it’s numbers. The digitization of all things, art, poetry and music are just drops in the great numbersphere. The flood is in the financials where everything is imaginary and has value until the economy is one great numbers game. Environmentalism is one more layer of numbers in a numbers game where social justice sells homes that people can’t afford and then sells the debt and then the debt of the debt.

In the post-modern economy everything is stripped down to its definitions, monetized, hollowed out and resold as an investment to funds and persons scrambling to outrun inflation by investing in consensually real unreal investments. Environmentalism, like all idealism for hire, sells out the one thing that it stands for… the right to pollute.

The right to pollute is not a small thing in a world where exhalation is pollution. The right to pollute means the right to drive a car, build a factory, buy non-local produce, eat a burger, fly to Miami and exhale. It is nothing less than the right to live.

Communism criminalized commerce and then legalized it on its terms. Environmentalism criminalizes life and legalizes it on its terms. The terms are paying a tribute to one of the many green companies owned wholly or partially by Al Gore and his merry band of green investors who steal from the rich and give to the even richer, and steal from the poor and give to the Gore..

Idealism is a commodity and when the investment comes due, you sell out in exchange for power and profit. One minute you’re standing in front of a spreadsheet of a quarter ton of cow farts a minute being emitted by the livestock of New Zealand which, you claim, spells imminent doom for all the ice on the planet, and the next minute you’re opening a business to sell pollution indulgences to the environmentally minded who want to fly to Fiji on a first class moral ticket.

One minute you’re warning about fossil fuels and the next minute you’re selling your news channel to a Middle Eastern oil tyranny for 500 million bucks. And you’re doing it because idealism is a commodity to be cashed in for a tidy profit right before tax season. The longer you allow your idealism to appreciate, in the eyes of others, the more money you can make cashing it out.

Al Gore sold access to China and made campaign calls from the White House because there was no legal controlling authority that said he couldn’t. He claimed that he invented the internet because there was no one, except a million comedians, to say that he didn’t. He claimed that his relationship with his wife inspired Love Story, because when you lie all the time,what’s one more lie?

The Gore lost the election, went into the wilderness of Belle Meade and came out with the revelation that it’s time to drop all the little lies and stick to one big one. Forget claiming that you invented the comma and the cocoa bean while on a conference call with Isaac Newton and just focus on warning everyone that the planet is about to explode. A lie as big as a planet. A lie that was too big to fail.

Gore monetized that lie, he took it to every bank on the planet and then he took it to every cable company and convinced them to give him access to 40 million American homes so that he could tell them that the planet was about to blow up. And just as he had at the White House, Al Gore cashed out that access and sold it to an enemy nation.

There are idealists who sell out and become hollow men, and there are hollow men who pretend to be idealists. Gore is a hollow man selling someone else’s alarmist hollow earth theory so he can make it to the next stage of a career that has no meaning or purpose. Like most professional idealists, Al Gore cares for nothing except money. Having sold out so many times, his only idea is to keep doing it again and again.

The professional idealist is a hollow man. A soulless man who is tasked with convincing everyone of the existence of the thing that he does not have. The Left has created an endless number of professional openings for such soulless men, for paid liars and faithless tricksters, who live only to convince the world that they believe just long enough for them to sell out one more time.

What would you call it if a former vice-president of the United States had sold his television network to a fascist or Communist front group at a time when such forces threatened America? Nothing very nice. But now Al Gore has sold out his admittedly obscure channel to al-Jazeera and taken a position on its board. Here’s an interview of myself on this issue.

1.) Is Al Jazeera a news station a former American vice president should want to associate with?

Absolutely not. There are multiple reasons.

First, al-Jazeera was originally run by Arab nationalists but these people were replaced by Islamists about four or so years ago. It is thus a radical media outlet run by people who are anti-American, anti-Christian, antisemitic, and anti-Western. In other words, it is an instrument of extremist revolutionary movements. On a number of occasions it has lent itself to promote and be used by violent terrorist groups.

Second, while al-Jazeera is more open to dissenting views than previous state-controlled media this is misleading. It is more open in English than in Arabic but former staffers in the English-language section have spoken about how it is not a free agent but the news is slanted to please the Qatari government which owns it. (They wanted to moderate the tone but the management objected because the owners wouldn’t like it.) So al-Jazeera is also an instrument of concealed propaganda.

Third, when al-Jazeera does have on dissenting views it tends to follow a formula. On a discussion show there is a radical and a moderate. The host sides with the radical and the callers always seem to be 100 percent radical (this reflects reality but also very possibly a selection by the station staff). The moderate is insulted and threatened. Thus much of the nominal openness is used to create a frenzy of hatred. Incidentally, the former Berlin correspondent spoke up publicly about al-Jazeera’s lack of function as a free media outlet and dishonesty just a few days ago.

But there’s more! Qatar, except for the (possibly soon to be overthrown) Syrian regime, is the most pro-Iran Arab government. It brokered the Fatah-Hamas deal which soon led to the Hamas coup. Far from objecting to the bloody Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, Qatar supported Hamas to this day. It is also the leading supplier of arms to the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. On every issue, Qatar has taken a more radical, anti-American positions than all other Arab countries except Syria. It also was a key financier of the overthrow of the Libyan regime. This was in line with US policy but there are deep suspicions that it has its own candidates for Libyan leadership in future more radical than the current regime.

So Gore had every reason to know what he was doing.

2.) Is al-Jazeera is using Gore to gain legitimacy?

Of course. They did this before by setting up their own organization in the United States and hiring some legitimate journalists who ended up resigning in disgust–notably David Marash–when they saw what it was like. Remember that as a station Gore’s property is worthless. No one watches it. The thing is being bought only to gain its access into American homes.

Finally, a speculative point. Who is going to watch al-Jazeera most? Presumably the kind of individual who will find its ideology and indoctrination to be congenial. It will make them hate America, the West, real democracy and Israel even more. As they watch al-Jazeera’s exaggerations and fabrications of anti-Muslim violence as well as its glorification of terrorism, might they be more inclined to engage in violence?

3.) Is al-Jazeera anti-Israeli and anti-American?

Of course. And again, Gore should know this. Therefore his behavior is disgraceful. But consider what it means in this case to say anti-Israel and anti-American. The same might be said of the BBC, for example, but saying that is based on the fact that it is often or usually so. Al-Jazeera is always that way because it has a coherent political line that always must be expressed or the program will not be aired and the reporter will be fired. In other words, the former vice-president of the United States cannot tell the difference between a free media and a state-controlled propaganda organ, or–which is worse–doesn’t care. Incidentally, there are even Arab television options to al-Jazeera. If he had sold to al-Arabiya for example it would have been much more acceptable since it is more moderate.

Al Gore, former politician, “founder” of the Internet, and Global Warming Guru has just traded entree into 40 million U.S. homes for $100 million from the Qatari-Royal-Family-Owned Arab media conglomerate Al Jazeera. The operation will be called Al JazeeraAmerica.

The deal has left many questioning its kosher bona fides.

Perhaps the most traif aspect of the sale was the press release issued by Gore and his parter, Joel Hyatt, the co-founders of Current TV. They wrote: “We are proud and pleased that Al Jazeera, the award-winning international news organization, has bought Current TV.” But the rest of the release bordered on self-parody, given that two multimillionaires were selling their ownership to a royal family which controls its citizens, and whose estimated worth is in the range of many $ billions.

Gore and his partner claimed they were selling their ownership to an entity that shares their views. Glenn Beck disclosed on Friday, January 4, that he reached out to Gore in an effort to acquire Current TV, but was rejected by Gore who said he wanted to “wanted to sell Current to someone ‘aligned’ with his values.”

The release by Gore and his partner described their efforts at Current Media as having been driven by a few central goals:

To give voice to those who are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling. Al Jazeera, like Current, believes that facts and truth lead to a better understanding of the world around us.

The idea that Current TV, which was created by, and peopled by and for the progressive left is “a voice that is not typically heard,” is patently absurd. The mainstream media in the United States is almost entirely by and for the “progressive left.”

But perhaps the claim that either Gore and Hyatt, or the Qatari royal family, will be speaking “truth to power” begs the question: who is “power” if not someone like Al Gore, a member of the metaphorical American Democratic Party’s royal family, or the Qatari Emirate and his family, who actually are royalty?

And then, of course, the stable of talent at Current TV ranged from left to further left, with “stars” like disgraced former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer, former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm – whose speech at the Democratic National Convention was so “animated” it set the twitter world aflame – and liberal lightening rod and former MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann.

Gore and Hyatt may have been correct when they said they were selling to a like-minded outlet; but it is much harder to make the claim that the views represented on Current TV and Al Jazeera are either diverse or independent.

It should be noted that one former American reporter who worked at Al Jazeera said he left the network in 2008 because of “cultural issues.” Dave Marash, who had worked at Nightline, left al Jazeera in part because he said he sensed an ‘anti-American’ bias there.

And then there’s the outcry that such a public supporter of increased taxes on the rich as Al Gore closed the deal just before the end of the year, which means that Gore’s tidy profit will not be subject to the new tax increases those other “millionaires and billionaires” will have to pay.

But what is really inciting hysteria by critics of the deal is that a non-free non-Western media outlet will be pouring out its version of what constitutes news to a largely unsuspecting American public. The reason this is so objectionable is that Al-Jazeera, unlike other state-owned media outlets such as the BBC, FRANCE 24, and Voice of America, does not reveal the state-ownership and censorship by Qatar.

As Elliot Abrams of the Council on Foreign Relations put it: “The answer is not censorship, but candor; if al-Jazeera were called Voice of Qatar, and clearly labeled as that nation’s international broadcaster, the situation would be clear to its viewers.”

While Gore and Hyatt have made out handsomely, Al Jazeera’s immediate payoff will not be financial. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, Current TV had been struggling with low ratings for quite some time.

The Arab news network Al-Jazeera has acquired former US Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV.

Gore and partner Joel Hyatt announced the sale on Wednesday.

The statement issued by the pair said Al-Jazeera and Current TV share common goals “To give voice to those who are not typically heard, to speak truth to power, to provide independent and diverse points of view, and to tell the stories that no one else is telling.”

With apologies to the late Jack Paar, who uttered those words his first night back as host of the old “Tonight Show” after a three-week absence in 1960, the Monitor returns this week after its own little hiatus.

A number of readers called or e-mailed over the past several weeks, anxious for the column to resume. I thank all who wrote or called for their kind words. Every writer thrives on knowing that his or her work has found an appreciative audience.

Speaking of appreciative readers, the Monitor lost two of them almost simultaneously one year ago, and this week’s column is dedicated to their memories.

From the moment I started at The Jewish Press some fourteen years ago, Irene Klass treated me more like a family member than an employee, calling me regularly not just at the office to discuss the paper but at home as well, for reasons both professional and personal.

She always wanted to know what was going on in my life, and she did so in a manner that never seemed prying or intrusive. She would call my wife on occasion just to tell her how much I meant to The Jewish Press and how happy she was that I was part of the paper. She always made me feel that coming to The Jewish Press was the best decision I ever made – something I feel to this day.

Irene – whenever she called she would always say “It’s Irene”; not “Rebbetzin Klass” or “Mrs. Klass,” just “Irene” – would make a point of letting me know whenever an article or column of mine resonated with her. And while I’m certain there were times she didn’t agree with something I wrote, she never told me so. There was no second-guessing with her; if she knew you had the best interests of The Jewish Press at heart and you were doing whatever you could for the betterment of the paper, that was good enough for her.

When The Jewish Press endorsed Republican George W. Bush for president in 2000, a number of readers made their distaste known, with several threatening to cancel their subscriptions. These readers – thrilled that the Democratic nominee, Al Gore, had chosen not just a Jew but an observant Jew, Sen. Joe Lieberman, as his running mate, and worried that the younger Bush had inherited his father’s less than warm feelings toward Israel – couldn’t understand our endorsement.

I had only recently been invited to join the editorial board and Irene knew I was one of the members who’d pushed for the Bush endorsement. Even though the majority of members felt as I did, I was still the new kid on the block, and as the negative feedback mounted (there were plenty of positive responses as well, but the naysayers had all the passion), I had to wonder how Irene felt. Almost as if she sensed my discomfort, she called to tell me not to give it any thought – the paper had made its choice and would survive a few canceled subscriptions.

Irene’s son-in-law Dr. Ivan Mauer, the husband of Jewish Press associate publisher Naomi Klass Mauer, always found time, despite a busy medical practice, to call with a compliment or a friendly suggestion. He’d invariably begin every phone conversation with, “I know you’ve got more important things to do than talk, but I just wanted to quickly tell you…”

Whenever he would drop by the old offices of The Jewish Press, usually to pick up Naomi from her second-floor office at the end of a workday, he made a point of taking the elevator up to my office on the third floor just to say hello.

A voracious reader, Ivan devoured not just books but periodicals of almost every variety. He had a particular interest in political magazines and subscribed to just about all of them. He never missed a Media Monitor column and relished trying to set me straight when he disagreed with me.

Even though Dr. Ivan and Rebbetzin Irene are no longer here in the physical sense, I can’t help but think they’re still part of the readership of The Jewish Press. I know I sense their presence whenever I sit down to write a column.

The announcement by Senator Joe Lieberman that he will not run for reelection when his current term is up in 2012 triggered the Monitor’s memories of the highlight of Lieberman’s political career: Al Gore’s selecting him in August 2000 to be his vice-presidential running mate.

Media coverage was mostly positive in the days immediately following the announcement. The editors of The New Republic saw the Lieberman pick as symbolizing the tolerance and decency of American society. “America,” they stated, “represents not only a revolution in the history of the world, but also a revolution in the history of the Jews…. this is the place in which Jews, and all other groups whose collective memory teaches them to regard the world with suspicion, must learn to take yes for an answer.”

The fear that conservative Christians would collectively vote against the Gore/Lieberman ticket out of some atavistic anti-Semitic instinct was pooh-poohed by, among others, former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, who described how conservative Christians “crowd around Rabbi Daniel Lapin when he speaks at a conservative gathering; they crowd around Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, David Horowitz and scores of [other Jewish conservatives].”

Lieberman’s outspoken religiosity inspired the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Paul Greenberg to quip, “Who would have guessed that the first fundamentalist to be nominated for vice president of the United States would be a Jewish one?” But Greenberg pointedly added: “One suspects that if Senator Lieberman were an equally committed Baptist or Mormon, many of those now hailing his nomination would be murmuring darkly about the dangers of the Religious Right.”

For some, Lieberman’s Jewishness was the ethnic/religious cherry on top of his political centrism. Former Forward editor Seth Lipsky wrote that “what excited me about Lieberman was his willingness to depart from post-McGovern Democratic Party orthodoxy on certain issues, or at least to display an admirable indifference to questions of political correctness.”

Even so, Lipsky feared that Lieberman, whose Senate voting record was considerably more liberal than his moderate image suggested, is not “immune to all his party’s destructive impulses…. [and he] has been right there by Hillary Clinton’s side as she has sought to obfuscate a record on the Middle East (and much else) that springs from the very new-leftist sentiments that drove so many of us away from the Democratic Party.”

It took only about a week for the coverage of Lieberman to sour considerably as many of the nation’s pundits beheld the senator from Connecticut backpedal, prevaricate and obfuscate his way through the Democratic National Convention.

In a devastating analysis piece, the late New York Timespolitical reporter R.W. Apple Jr. noted that since “Mr. Gore has a bit of a reputation for flip-flopping and corner-cutting on issues like abortion and trade,” it had been hoped by campaign strategists that Lieberman “would lend the ticket some stand-by-your-guns luster.”

But “much of that [luster],” Apple warned, “could be lost if the senator seemed to be bending to political expediency at this stage.”

Apple then proceeded to run down the laundry list of issues on which Lieberman had indeed, literally within hours of his selection, bowed to political expediency. (Among the several examples cited: Despite his having sponsored – and repeatedly voted for – experimental voucher legislation in the Senate, Lieberman, as soon as he was chosen by Gore, phoned the president of the American Federation of Teachers and “promised that a Gore-Lieberman administration would be resolutely anti-voucher.”)

Sam Schulman, at the time a columnist for the New York Press, asked: “What price Jewish values if within a week Senator Lieberman has changed course on virtually every one of his core ideas in pursuit of his political ambitions?”

Lieberman, continued Schulman, “has agreed to sell out virtually every principle which he has advocated in the past,” including moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

The late Sidney Zion also weighed in that week, charging that Lieberman’s “Senate record reveals a man who has trimmed his sails more than a little to satisfy Bill Clinton and his pro-Palestinian Jewish advisers in the State Department and National Security Council.”

And Zion called attention to Lieberman’s recent declaration on “Meet the Press” that Pat Buchanan is “not at all an anti-Semite.” In case anyone missed the point, Lieberman elaborated: “I enjoy Pat Buchanan’s company, he’s a bright, interesting guy who’s been misinterpreted.”

It was precisely such sappy talk and political shape-shifting on Lieberman’s part, wrote Zion, that had “made some Jews stop kvelling in their tractates over the first Jew to make a major-party national ticket.”

No. I’ve done some research and I’ve come to the conclusion that the hype on global warming today is like the hype on eugenics years ago. This is the daas Torah of left-wing politics. They want us to focus on big industry issues and divert our attention from the real issues. This is just a ploy by the left wing.

- John Taub, production manager of Unnecessary Objects

Yes. I’m very much concerned. What’s going to happen years from now? I already see unnatural changes in the climate. We’ve had an unusually warm winter earlier on – I didn’t have to wear my winter coat in December, which is not normal. I don’t believe global warming is a political distraction. Global warming is a slow process. We may not see the effects immediately.

- Shaina Rosenfeld, student

No. I’m concerned about the environment but this is all hype to promote an agenda of fear in politics. Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” fabricated data to instill fear in the public and therefore promote left-wing politics. Global warming is used as a catalyst for the Left’s agenda. It takes the focus off anything else.

- Matt Okin, writer, director

Yes. I recently saw a clever cartoon with a picture of a snowman melting and the caption read, “Where is Mr. Frosty?” I need to look more into the topic, though. For instance, I would like to see Al Gore’s documentary since many people have been recommending it. I don’t think the threat of global warming is an exaggeration.